Starlight
by Luna Lovegood5
Summary: Outside in the Ohio weather, her umbrella is yellow like a star, and he sees her shining brightly through a classroom window steamed with the sky's tears. - FinnxRachel


**Starlight**

**Disclaimer:** Nothing is mine.  
**A/N:** Written for the "1 Sentence" challenge on livejournal - fifty sentences about Finn and Rachel's relationship, each inspired by fifty different prompts. Each of the bolded words is a prompt.

---

**Bonds**

It's funny how something as simple as singing can throw two polar opposites together (and how they can find so many other reasons to stay).

**Name **

" I should change it; a true star always has a stage name," Rachel Berry says one day (_I think it's nice_, he doesn't reply).

**Ears**

His are kind of big and they stick out a little bit, and she really, _really _wants to kiss them.

**Market**

He thinks that if they ever have to do that _Push It_ dance routine again, he might just explode (_think about the mailman, think about the mailman_), but there's no denying that Rachel's business plan worked – Glee Club's target market were on the edge of their seats.

**Heaven**

Sometimes, she daydreams that Mr Schue sets them love songs on purpose – that he sees what could be between her and Finn, that he encourages it (most days, she knows this is silly).

**Chocolate**

The colour of her eyes makes him really, really want to eat donuts – you know, the kind with the chocolate frosting that's gone a little crispy at the edges and has all those shiny sprinkles and – oh, crap, wasn't he supposed to be singing something?

**Innocence**

Most nights now, berating herself in the mirror: oh, Rachel Berry, kissing a boy who already has a girlfriend – are you_ really_ that girl?

**Kiss**

_I know what I did was wrong, I get that, but... that kiss was real._

It is probably her heart holding onto the latter part of that sentence that stops her mind from hating him because of the former.

**Touch**

He pats Quinn's shoulder occasionally (because he feels like it is the right thing to do), he makes out with her under pictures of Jesus (because he is the quarterback and she is the cheerleader and it is what everyone expects him to do), he hugs her every now and then (because she is always sad and he never knows what else to do) – and he doesn't notice there is anything missing until he joins New Directions and spends half his time holding hands with Rachel Berry.

**Wind**

_Oh, tell me how I'm supposed to breathe with no air..._

Is it wrong that a tiny little part of her enjoys this performance (his fingers through hers, the wind machine in her hair, his arms around her in a move no-one choreographed) solely because it feels like revenge on Quinn for all those years of hatred and pornographic bathroom doodles?

**Jealousy**

The one thing Finn Hudson hates about Rachel Berry (he thinks, as he realises exactly who Puck is singing to – and nevermind her star-blinded eyes, her almost frightening enthusiasm, her full knowledge of her talent; he thinks he might have grown to be a little bit in love with those) is how she can make him feel like such a bad person without doing anything at all.

**Sun**

He should probably be watching his girlfriend right now, but he can't tear his eyes off Rachel and that bright yellow dress.

**Devotion**

That look in his eyes sometimes, before he catches himself – Quinn doesn't think it would be stretching too far to call it love (and does she deserve anything less than this quiet betrayal, really, after what she has done to him?).

**Telephone**

_Now you're calling me up on the phone / So you can have a little while and a moan / But it's only because you're feeling alone..._

She's having fun performing, maybe nothing more, but right now he sort of wishes this song would never end (isn't there some kind of school rule against skirts that short?).

**Potatoes **

When he asks her if he has a potato head, she has to try very hard not to kiss him.

**Hair**

They might look kinda dumb in these wigs, but hey, if he gets to spend half the routine with Rachel Berry's legs clamped around his waist, he's not gonna complain.

**Rain**

Outside in the Ohio weather, her umbrella is yellow like a star, and he sees her shining brightly through a classroom window steamed with the sky's tears.

**Comfort**

She holds him after she tells him, when he doesn't believe, and she hates herself for motives that are no longer selfish or wrong.

**Hell**

Even on the worst day of his life, she shines bright in the background, the only one he can trust.

**Freedom**

So many times Finn has wanted so desperately to be freed of this situation but now... he's not free, not really; he still thinks every day about the life and love his little girl will never know.

**Death**

Rachel thought that was it – the end of Glee, the end of New Directions, the end of _them –_ but then he came back and, right by her side, sang his heart out on that stage as though it hadn't just been broken (and, God help her, she has never loved him more than she does in that moment).

**Star**

_Are you OK?  
__Don't worry about me. You want to be a star. This is your chance._

And she thinks that's the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to her.

**Clouds**

_Don't bring around a cloud to rain on my parade._

He has always known she had a voice, but tonight behind that curtain, shivers run up and down his arms just listening to her (Quinn notices, and doesn't meet his eye).

**Happiness**

When she goes out there, when she sings that song she's been rehearsing in her bedroom mirror with a hairbrush since she was four years old, it is mostly for herself – but there is a tiny, undeniable part of her that wants to win for him, and only for him.

**Smile**

She can feel his beaming smile behind her, burning into her back, and she's pretty damn sure that there's never been anything more beautiful than this moment (he needs this win, and they're going to get it).

**Melody**

Once upon a time, before Quinn and the baby, she did nothing but push for romantic duets, but now she only pulls away when more than anything he wants her to draw closer – when, for the first time since they met, she is_ allowed_ to.

**Pain**

He is a good guy and he deserved to know (she tells herself this over three thousand times).

**Tears**

Two weeks after sectionals, he seeks her out (_You're the only one who's ever been honest with me, Rachel_) and they both pretend that the wetness on his cheeks is a result of the rain.

**Sickness**

When a heavily pregnant Quinn gets a cold and Finn spends every moment worrying over her, Rachel tries hard not to mind (a star shouldn't have emotional constraints, anyway; they're just distractions).

**Blood**

The day Quinn leaves New Directions is the day Rachel falls and cuts her knee after performing a dance routine with a little too much enthusiasm: Finn rushes to the other (unpopular, un-pregnant, un-unfaithful) girl's side and Quinn thinks, _you're right, I can't do this anymore – it hurts too much._

**Confusion**

When she offers to help him re-include homework in his busy schedule: "What do you mean, the square root of four isn't rainbows?"

**Gift**

A purple fluffy bear as thanks for finally getting him to understand algebra, because it makes him think of her purple sequinned leg-warmers (and he really has liked her in those all along).

**Sky**

He worries he will never be good enough, because he is just a high school boy leading a Glee Club in smalltown Ohio and she, she will never stop reaching higher.

**Fear**

But then, he is the only person to whom she will _ever _admit that she sometimes gets the teeniest, tiniest bit nervous before she goes on stage.

**Weakness **

And so, because there's just one thing stopping him now, because he can't get the bastard's face out of his head and he can't deal with her having been with him too: "You and Puck..."

**Completion**

_What happened between us in that auditorium was real. You've got feelings for me and you just haven't got the guts to admit it._

He does now.

**Soft**

The quirk of his lips, the look in his eyes, the way she always knew his hair would feel beneath her hands.

**Sensual**

Finn Hudson never knew what the word _sensual _meant before he met Rachel Berry (that day she sang to him on his birthday in nothing but his football shirt, he had no words good enough to describe her so he looked one up).

**Sex **

"Girls want sex just as much as boys do," is _never _something Quinn would say – and look where that attitude got her.

**Lightning/Thunder**

Dating Rachel Berry means you get to do crazy things you never knew you'd enjoy, like sing outside in the middle of a thunderstorm (and kiss under the darkening sky after you jump a mile when someone switches a porch light on and admit the distinct possibility that you've always been a little bit afraid of lightning, actually).

**Moon**

The moon has never been good enough; she is reaching further, to the stars, and he hopes more than anything (more than a football scholarship or a music scholarship, more than being able to walk down the hallway without wanting to cry and/or kick something every time he sees Quinn or Puck) that he will still be by her side the day she gets there.

**Home**

Being on the receiving end of an impromptu safe sex lecture from Rachel's two gay dads the first time she brings him home is way up there on Finn's list of "weirdest moments of my life".

**Speed**

He finds a proper old road and races them down it at breakneck speed, the car roof off and the windows down, and he almost crashes into a tree because he's so busy thinking about how much she looks like a movie star (one of those black-and-white ones his mom loves so much) with her dark hair blowing all around behind her like that.

**Hands**

When they think about it months later, every single performance was just an excuse, really.

**Waves**

She takes him to the beach because he says he's never seen the sea before, but as far as he's concerned it's not half as beautiful as the sight of her dancing along the sand, hands outstretched to the sky, voice reaching out to the stars.

**Forever**

High school isn't, she knows that – he just hopes she can be.

**Taste**

Her head is kind of fuzzy and she doesn't know if it's the wine or the exhilaration, but when he takes her down Broadway for her 21st birthday and kisses her underneath the giant billboard for_ West Side Story, _he tastes like starlight.

**Life**

There's that career of hers, that flat of theirs, that degree of his and, most of all, the tiny jewellery box in his suit pocket to prove that maybe, just maybe he's not a Lima Loser afterall (tonight, he will ask her to marry him, and she will say yes).

**Technology**

He'll never admit it, but he cannot put into words how thankful he is when the ultrasound reveals their first baby to be a boy (Drizzle might never have been his, but he has never forgotten her).

**Supernova**

If those judges way back in high school thought _Don't Rain on My Parade _was good, he thinks, first row on the first night of her first real Broadway musical, they ain't seen nothing yet.


End file.
